Disclaimer: Not my 'verse. I just play in it. I earn nothing except personal gratification and sanity. Well, gratification, anyway.

Note: Post BDM- Contains spoilers. Title and last line are from the song "May It Be" by Enya, lyrics by Roma Ryan. I dare you to read while listening to it.

A Promise Lives Within You Now

She was broken. Her wings would not unfurl, her heart would not beat. Her silence was surrounded by the brutal destruction around her, the raving of the Reavers, the beating of Alliance weaponry, and the cries of those she loved as they began to fall one by one.

Would it ever be over? Blood stained her, and if she could have wept, she would have. She closed her heart and turned off all the lights. See. Nobody was home. She was alone in the darkness, cradling the remains of the lost one in her arms.

Then he was being taken from her, and she had to let him go. Someone was touching her with heat and fire and grating steel. A shuddering tore through her entire frame, and she felt a sudden surge of hope as an unfamiliar weight was lifted. Balance slowly was restored.

Rains washed down from the sky, and she wondered if it were possible to bathe away the pain, to start over.

Mal turned and made his way up the gangplank. Zoe was approaching him, her beauty enhanced, not marred, by her grief. "Think she'll hold together."

"She's tore up plenty, but she'll fly true."

She shivered with flickerings of life.

Quick fingers touching her. Then a whisper from a sweet and loving voice, full of joy and promise. "That's my girl. That's my good girl."

A firm stroke of those skilled hands and her heart began to beat again.

A small hand was caressing her. A familiar hand that was touching her in places that it hadn't yet dared, running the familiar sequences. She turned on the lights for the those hands. They had come home.

"You ready to get off this heap and back to your civilized life?" Mal turned away from Inara and her pulse dimmed.

"I.. I don't know." As th